Saturday, March 7, 2009

In the closing session of 14th Lok Sabha, Hon'ble Speaker Mr Somnath Chatterjee expressed his serious concern over the poor performance of the members. He also shared that nearly 24% of Lok Sabha time was wasted in shouting. We also published a poodcast from Mr Era Chezhian last week in this issue, expressing our serious concern.

Now, the media has started analysing the performance of the Members of Parliament in 14th Lok Sabha. While, we blame the members for non performance, we thought, we should also appreciate good performers, who took their job seriously. We have decided to feature some of the top performers, who are the motivators for other Members.

14th Lok Sabha had 14 sessions during the tenure.

Mr S K Kharventhan, Member of Parliament (Congress) from Palani (Tamilnadu) Constituency has emerged as one of the top 5 performers in the 14th Lok Sabha (all 14 sessions combined) in the following areas:

1. Issues raised under Rule 377 : Members can raise important public issues under Rule 377 to draw the attention of the Government and the Public. Mr Kharventhan stood as No 1 in raising such issues. He has raised 377 issues. (Average is 6 issues per member - 176 members did not raise any issue)

2. Question hour is an important time for raising questions on public interest. The average questions raised by the members in the 14th Lok Sabha is 167 per member and 78 Members did not raise any questions. Mr Kharventhan has rasied 1200 questions and remains in the top 5 performers under this category.

3. Participation in debates: There is a general feeling that Members did not participate in the debates in connection with legislative business, bills, budgets, etc. The average for 14th Lok Sabha was 24 times per Member. 57 Members did not participate. Mr Kharventhan has participated in 187 times and remains 6th or 7th amongst the top performers.

4. Usage of library: He was using the Parliament Library extensively to prepare his notes on various debates.

5. MP funds: He has utilised 100% of the MP funds for welfare projects in his constituency and 99% of the projects have already been implemented.

He will be contesting the elections this time also, if his party permits. If he is re-elected, he wants to score No 1 position in all the above areas in the 15th Lok Sabha.

PodUniversal congratulates him for his top performance and wishes him all the best. Please listen to his interview recorded over phone on 6th March 2009. Please click to play. ( 9 Minutes) The streaming of the audio will be smooth in broad band connections. If your streaming is not smooth, you may download the mp3 format and play through your mp3 player.